Private Schools

Work-Study School

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Austin, Texas, plans to open a high
school in August that would be the third such Catholic school in the
nation to use a work-study program to subsidize its costs.

The school will be called Juan Diego Catholic High School after a
16th-century Mexican who is believed by many Catholics to have received
a vision of Mary at Guadalupe. The Vatican recently announced plans to
canonize Juan Diego as a saint.

The school will be modeled after Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in
Chicago, which started the work-study model in 1996. Under that setup,
each student works one day a week in an entry-level job shared with
three other students, said Todd Austin, the school's president. Payment
for the work covers most of the students' tuition.

Families are still expected to pay $2,200 in annual tuition in
addition to the money provided by the work program, though it may be
less under a sliding scale based on their incomes.

"The goal is to make private education affordable to more families,"
Mr. Austin said. "Cristo Rey in Chicago has proved that these students,
with the proper training and supervision provided by the school, can be
productive in the workplace."

He added, however, that the focus of the work-study schools is not
to prepare students for the workplace, but rather to prepare them for
college.

The launch of Catholic work-study schools is being financed by the
Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation, a private group in Menlo
Park, Calif.

The foundation provided grants for feasibility studies and the
establishment of the Cristo Rey school and the De LaSalle North
Catholic school in Portland, Ore., another work-study school, which
opened last September. It is also financing the conversion of an
existing Catholic school to the work-study model in Los Angeles.

The Austin school has received a three-year, $700,000 grant from the
foundation, along with $400,000 from the Diocese of Austin for
operating costs.

The Cassin foundation is paying for feasibility studies in six
cities that could lead to the opening of more work-study schools, said
Jeff Thielman, the foundation's executive director.

Though the donors for the foundation, Bebe and Brendan J. Cassin,
are Catholic, and the foundation so far has paid only for Catholic-run
work-study schools, it is open to underwriting such schools run by
other religious groups, Mr. Thielman said.

However, he said, as with the Catholic work-study schools, "they
must serve economically disadvantaged students."